Angel

I think I started my new life

As an anorexic angel.

I woke up to my chapped pink lips

Breathing snow that looked like ash

In a world full of that heavy dampening

Like the afternoon your stereo

Fell into the lake.

My milk skin, stretched too tight

Across my curled bones

Had long forgotten the flavor

Of your cigarette stains on the curtains.

I stretch out my paper thin body

And I swear that my dark hair is

The only contrast between

My shallow collarbones and the winter.

I was clothed by the nudity

That is thrust upon us by innocence,

My soft, slight, shivering breaths

Puffing up into space,

Unsure of their destination.

Wearing a blanket of goosebumps,

Reaching out with dry hands

And cracked nailbeds

Sent me reeling into an ocean of white

A blinding silence,

Like a mute into a trumpet.

I was not born beautiful.

The first sounds I made were that of choking

On the memory of my crimes of self-hate.

My first word was why,

My first movement a nauseous whirl

Trying to collect some semblance of reality

Inside this blinding whiteness.

I was born with the aftertaste

Of the little white pearls I had swallowed

And now found spilt about my breast,

The acid memory of wanting to die,

The corrosive scent of my fear.

I think I was stillborn,

With aching bones and a breaking hair

And no nourishment within my skin.

My dented halo tastes like iron,

And it’s wrapped around my throat.

My wings are ragged and white, so white,

So new and so dead.

I let the water race over my skin

Until it ran as cold as the ashes that fell

Because I wasn’t pure enough for snow.

I let the memory settle in my mind,

The way it felt when

You invaded my brokenness.

I traced your scratches on my hipbones

And the soreness in my limbs.

I laid on the floor

And prayed

That God would have more mercy

On his little anorexic angel.